i want to play ys 8 but it’s still like £50 for some reason
you can probably find it cheaper on disc? that happens a lot with semi-niche games, like how most koei strategy titles never go below £40 on psn, but are next to nothing on disc
yeah i check amazon/shopto/ebay every so often and no joy
50 is actually on the cheap side looking at ebay right now lol
did nintendo make this or something
Played some Subnautica today. You can turn off the food and water requirements and have yourself a regular aquanaut’s holiday. The crafting is simple enough so far that it’s not annoying me, and it’s fun to slowly expand your range of exploration. The ocean environment is gorgeous and it’s fun to learn about this alien ocean ecosystem. The creature designs seem to vary between lame and inspired. I found some fucked up manatees with gas masks for heads covered in exploding green pustules that release acid into the water.
There seems to be a surprising amount of video game here, with like a plot and stuff. So far it’s pretty understated but interesting worldbuilding in the Metroid lonelygame vein. I think there is some serious potential here for Ecco-style weird ocean horror, and I’m really hoping the game goes there.
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started playing cabela’s red dead hunter, seems chill so far.
the entire 2000s, every game ever made by mistwalker, etc., were a long process of people desperately trying to find a replacement for their absent parent: 90s final fantasy
it had some interesting side effects, like how tekken 7 is a direct result of unreal being the only engine to take seriously japanese documentation at that time, but a lot of those games were not good
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Lost Odyssey was bloated and slow but it’s artful and genuine
All of the locales are a fresher exotic, than most garish jrpg strokes.
The soundtrack is one of Uematsu’s strongest.
It’s definitely not 100% suck, and especially amongst sibling 00’s (DNA closest to FF)
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I played through Phantasy Star Ages version this weekend on your recommendation, I had a good time. I love this value-added-emulation format and I hope it becomes the standard moving forward. Aside from the minimap, the start-menu-accessible reference pages explaining stuff like who can equip what are great.
The Ages-easy-version tilts a bit too easy and suppresses the intended experience of harrowing dungeons a bit too much, yeah. Showing you the pit traps before you’ve fallen into them also seems unnecessarily generous. I would’ve preferred an in-between version with a bit more grindiness and a bit higher encounter rate to give me a taste of it. It allowed me to experience the whole game at all, though.
There’s no way making this game harder would turn battles into anything other than spamming “attack” though, there are hardly any other tools than that. The decisions are entirely at the resource management level and “how far do I dare to go” in this genre.
What really blew my mind about the game design in this is the treasure chests in the dungeons. Half of them explode in your face for massive damage and the other half are microscopic amounts of money or items purchasable for such. It’s actually correct not to pick a single chest up unless it’s the chest at the top which is the reason for the dungeon existing, and that’s incredible. “Treasure” as a whole is a gigantic mean-spirited prank in Phantasy Star
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The chests in Phantasy Star work like Wizardry chests but in Wizardry you have a thief that can check for traps. It’s bizarre.
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Ohhh yeahhh! I should have turned off the survival systems too, then I would have played through it already. As it stands now I want to start it again from the beginning without all the survival stuff but I also don’t because, well, starting from the beginning. I only like to restart nuDoom a hundred thousand times
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I got lost and brutally murdered the first time I tried to play Phantasy Star
I started a new game and had no idea where to go for a while, but then I read the manual which had a specific section about it so I guess I’m not the only one. Once I got a feel for and started recognizing the names that the townsfolk kept repeating it I got into it.
The game is quite pretty! Scanlines + smoothing make it look great! The pause menu backgrounds are impressive. This was a Master System game?! Now I feel bad that I have ignored that console entirely
The inventory space limitations are kind of interesting. You have to show your roadpass/passport every time, and dungeon keys don’t break but you still have to use them all the time - I guess to force you to keep them all in your inventory? Not very ergonomic but it brings the resource management to the forefront
like!!!
i’m currently stuck in the drainage system or w/e. i’m right after a karma gate that won’t let me through until i have like 3 karma so i can’t backtrack. the only screens forward require me to swim in an underwater section with air ducts that are just barely spaced apart that i may or may not drown between them. how much air i have seems to vary??? and then there are these leeches that pop out of the only exit and attach to me and kill me. it’s frustrating and it’s made me look up stuff and i haven’t found any answers to this but i’ve already accidentally spoiled myself on a few things and augh
I think the only other thing they could do to make the battles more interesting would be to at least double everyone’s MP. That way wasting MP on regular mobs is less of an issue and some of the non attack spells might actually come in handy.
I liked the Talk option, I wish more Jrpgs had other methods of interaction in battle like this.
Which reminds me of one of my favourite bits in the game, when you find that giant spider in a prison cell who is just there to give you some random hint
Ugh, yeah. If that’s one with an area a couple inches above, where you can crawl leftwards, the following sections with those water-moss vine things can be hard to read on (their length and speed).
Can’t be sure where you’re headed progression wise but based on that Shaded Citadel pic, if you’re getting toward Mem. Crypts / The Leg, good luck. The latter didn’t break my will but had me ARRRGHH why the FAAAK-ing so long I despaired.
Wait well the area you’re describing I believe is
This caught me up a while too, my trick was to make sure I did not press the swim/boost button and strictly only swam perfect arcs through the underwater part, which yeah of course easier said then done. I don’t remember leeches at the end but maybe you just need to somehow dodge or swing through to open air on the other side.
what game??
Beat the NES Gradius today without save states. Just starting playing it a couple days ago, so it’s probably not too hard to do (although I do have a decent amount of experience w/ other shmups). I did practice with save states, cause fuck getting to level 3 and dying immediately every time.
It was nearly deathless; my first death was literally seconds before the end door. Then I died 2 or 3 more times trying to do that section w/o powerups.
Also somehow I skipped stage 4 and I’m not really sure how or why?
EDIT: apparently killing 10 Moai heads warps you from 3 to 5! There are warps possible in stages 1 and 2 as well, but they seem harder to do accidentally.
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rain world !
@anothersphere that’s from the subterranean area, which you get to from farm arrays, i think? and then you move on to drainage system which i’m currently stuck on. i’ve been getting better at it, but like, uhhhhhh
once i mastered swimming this isn’t so bad, but they’re spaced out apart just enough that it can feel impossible at first. what makes it still really bad, unfortunately, is that it’s hard to get slugcat inside a tunnel underwater for some reason, and what makes it even worse are the leeches i mentioned. it’s one of those moments where i have to throw myself at a wall for 20 mins hoping the odds are randomized in my favor before i stop and try again later. i’m getting further and further, at least.
i visited shaded citadel once near the beginning of my journey and unfortunately never went back.
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Biggest detriment to the whole experience. Randomness bringing completely uncounterable deaths, being punished for hastiness when you grow tired or annoyed, that’s fine stuff. There’s just too many large stretches where you might’ve perfected your maneuvers over multiple screens, only to get snapped first step into a new one. Or overwhelmed with no escape. And that kind of chaos repeated more than a couple times, comes off more maddening than any lesson learned or brutal theme is worth. It’d be different if controlling Slugcat was more masterable, some might be able to but it’s far from getting used to a rogue or souls-ish handling.
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Last night I completed Maize, a first-person narrative comedy game about sentient cornstalks and a robotic Russian bear who hurls ableist insults in every sentence.
It was… interesting.
I’d hesitate to call it a puzzle game when every aspect of the narrative told you exactly where to go, what items to use in what place, etc. It even went so far as to block off paths at various points with bright orange boxes of oranges to prevent you from deviating from the current objective.
There was some humour to be found in the item descriptions and the passive-aggressive post-it note conversations scattered around the environment.
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